however I have not got 20 years left in me jumping through hoops to fix something that is just a tangled mess. The problem is that Linux is a great mess, it is better than it was but it is still a mess.

Uh, well no. I don't know where you are getting this stuff from, but refer to the previous point.

The code quality is very poor. Most of the time stuff simply does just not work, and you have to keep upgrading the distribution so that all you configuration is lost and you have to start all over again.

"Pete, it's a fool looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart." Ulysses Everett McGill.Do not send technical questions via personal messaging - they will be ignored.I speak for myself, not Arduino.

I tend to agree with a lot that you have said, and for the types of projects "we" would be interested in linux is a very poor/overcomplicated choice, especially when you just want to jump in there and get it done.

What might be really good is if someone ported freedos, but thats a HUGE project, and I wont be doing it, I said screw PI a while back and ended up finding a 800Mhz vortex86 board which is of course intel compatible and a little over twice the size ... course thats a 200 something dollar board, but I got it for a song and a dance (actually about the same price as a pi + shipping) and I can slap a IDE drive on it and run any x86 os I please ... so good luck, enjoy the pi

To be honest, I think you get what you pay for. The Pi is pretty cheap, so you don't expect something that is going to work flawlessly out of the box. Or indeed, reliably, if my experience is any guide.

Once the kinks are ironed out, and the operating system is tweaked, and maybe some interfaces are clearly defined, it may well work very well.

It may be very useful for situations like where you want to make a network printer box, or some kind of interface to things (eg. weather data collection).

Whether it is a fantastic teaching tool for newbies at school, well I think we can wait for the teachers to tell us that.

At least with my Arduino (or bare-bones boards with an Atmega328P on them) I don't have to worry if the "device drivers" all loaded at boot time, or if the USB interfaces enumerated, or if the Ethernet port initialized. I don't have to worry because it doesn't have them.

Please post technical questions on the forum, not by personal message. Thanks!

It may be very useful for situations like where you want to make a network printer box

That's kind of the silly situations that the pi gets promoted for

"want a network printer box? nevermind that 15$ refurb netgear with 2 usb ports and a 4 port switch that does everything you want! get a PI bash your head against the wall with a stupid print server that crashes cause you loaded a ricoh driver! Install your own OS, make your own box, only for more than twice the price!!!"

ugh, give me the netgear ... wait I have one, it worked flawlessly out of the box by plugging in a power adapter and running a wizard

Projects where the Pi is useful are things where you have data to gather ( slow data ) and you want to graphically display it. It is a small sub set of all possible projects.Something like a home security web based system sending web cam data over the net.

In my wand projecthttp://www.thebox.myzen.co.uk/Raspberry/Magic_Wand.htmlI minimised the disruptive effects of Linux by using a hardware time to generate the delays. The program spends most of it's time in these and so is not affected unless the time is stolen just close to the very end.This picture is one of the "out takes" from that project and illustrates the point. In actual practice you don't notice this very much but it can be captured in photos.

Don't judge linux by your experience with the Pi, GM. Besides the realtime issue, which isn't really an issue once you accept its a multitasking OS (although putting GPIO on it lends itself to needing realtime), Linux on the Pi and Linux on half decent hardware are two entirely unrelated animals. I use it full time, although my distro of choice is Ubuntu, Debian is close enough so the differences on the Pi aren't great. The Pi sucks because of the severe compromises made to get the price down in my opinion. You're right, it is stone soup. The choice of power supply is the root of a lot of the problems. Charging a smart phone battery is a whole different animal to running a desktop computer, factor in the polyfuses (needed to stop it overloading said PSU and wiring) and the poor USB/ethernet implementation and the whole thing becomes a pain. Its lack of grunt is sometimes a problem but I'll leave that bit alone.

I have now a rock solid Pi, (attacking said polyfuses with a soldering iron and feeding it power via the GPIO pins got rid of many of the problems I was having) , but I still can't get it to play nicely with any of my webcams (all of which are plug and play on my PC and Ubuntu) and using workarounds for talking to an Arduino is a pain. I've just ordered a 'works out of the box' webcam as a last ditch attempt to get it to do what I want, we'll see on that front.

I'd take Linux over OSX anyday but I haven't really used a Mac in earnest since Tiger.

Projects where the Pi is useful are things where you have data to gather ( slow data ) and you want to graphically display it. It is a small sub set of all possible projects.Something like a home security web based system sending web cam data over the net.

In my wand projecthttp://www.thebox.myzen.co.uk/Raspberry/Magic_Wand.htmlI minimised the disruptive effects of Linux by using a hardware time to generate the delays. The program spends most of it's time in these and so is not affected unless the time is stolen just close to the very end.This picture is one of the "out takes" from that project and illustrates the point. In actual practice you don't notice this very much but it can be captured in photos.

Cool project Mike. Now you just need to add a stepper motor to drive the wand as your old and shaky hands are not showing off the display in it's best light (pun!)